I have a "storage track" that I never really use for storage. I'm thinking of turning it into a team track. I know I can unload just about everytype of car there (boxcars, reefers, flats, gons, tank).
Would there ever be any reason or even possible to unload a covered hopper on a team track? I'm thinking like a 3 bay covered hopper? How would you model it (some sort of pump and hose similiar to unloading a tank car?)
I'd appreciate your thoughts. I'm just trying to generate some traffic.
Covered hoppers do indeed show up at team tracks. Most of the time, they are unloading grain and agricultural-related products, i.e. fertilizer and lime, using portable conveyors. If you can find a copy, the September 1993 issue of Rail Model Craftsman had a nicely illustrated article entitiled "The UP's Riverside [CA] Grain Operations." According to the article, the team track there received sugar beet pellets from Idaho, barley from North Dakota, oats from Minnesota and wheat from Colorado.
Here in Arizona I have seen covered hoppers of potash and other fertilizer being unloaded, among other places, in Maricopa and El Mirage which are located in farming areas.
Recently on a Yahoo site there was a picture of sulphur being unloaded from covered hoppers in east Texas.
John Timm
-Morgan
It's fairly common to see cover hoppers with pneumatic unloading equipment directly unloading into bulk semi-trailers, especially in transloading yards.
One word: Transflo! (OK, hunting around that site you'll see various unloading methods, such as pneumatic to trailer, conveyer to trailer, bucket unloader (from gondolas) to trailer, pump (from tank car for food service), and so on - but the pictures are unfortunately rather small)
I forgot one of the most common products that is shipped in covered hoppers and unloaded at team tracks: plastic pellets. The Trans-Flo website at http://www.metalslogistics.com/ has pictures, albeit rather small, of the types of equipment used for off-loading.
Adding to Mr. Timm's cogent answer:
Everything under the sun is unloaded from covered hoppers at ordinary team tracks, sidings, or spurs. Most of the old "team tracks" are no more but it easy to find a siding, side track, house track, or unused/shared use industrial spur that serves the same purpose. It helps to have a pit if you need an auger, but it doesn't have to be a very large pit, and it doesn't even have to be permanent. Remove a couple of ties, dig a hole, and so long as it's not raining it's just fine.
I have never seen anyone elevate a track (and I have been to at least 100 of these ad hoc unloading sites in the last 2 years in the course of my railroad job) because that is too expensive, unless the amount of commodity being unloaded is in the neighborhood of 20-50 carloads per day.
Commodities unloaded this way include:
Well, as you can see Bandit great minds think alike on the MR forums (note mine & Desert Dog's Transflo postings), but the basic idea is that Transflo uses specialized equipment (usually mounted on truck chassis or specialized tractors), which can be as simple as a pump with input and output hose connections (and probably a rack on the truck to store the hoses), to something more involved like a conveyer with a pan to slip under the hopper outlet and retrieve the material to dump into the waiting trailer. If your hopper has pneumatic piping you're in great shape - use a hose from the hopper thru the pump and into the bulk truck trailer - else you'll need to do a bit more modeling. Lots of good HO trucks to strip the bed/body from the chassis, and mount your custom pumps/rigs/conveyors on nowadays.
chutton: Generally most of us in the railroad business try to avoid pneumatic discharge because the cars are expensive and hard to get. Some customers, particularly the cement and drilling mud people, are in love with the darn things nonetheless. Augurs are a maintenance headache but so is the PD equipment, and PD trucks are carrying a lot of extra tare weight around. I've set up customers both ways -- to each their own. I just tend to shy away from anything that's specialized.
RWM
Railway Man wrote:chutton: Generally most of us in the railroad business try to avoid pneumatic discharge because the cars are expensive and hard to get. Some customers, particularly the cement and drilling mud people, are in love with the darn things nonetheless.
Actually I've seen more pneumatic discharge (of course, I am not a railroad man, just a railfan who doesn't tresspass) in North Jersey and on Long Island, but then I've seen more plastic firms than anything else around these parts (and also bakerys and food firms, using flour PD cars). I don't know, by best guestimate I'd say 60% of the hoppers I've seen have the piping for pneumatic discharge.
Alas, for some reason cement seems to be shipped by trucks around these parts, so I don't know if they would use PD or not...
Interesting. Chicago-and-West is 95% of my career. Different regions have different cultures, in shipping just like food.
Flour doesn't ship so hot in anything BUT a PD car, but then in the West, there's not a lot of flour moving by rail.
Cement folks is NOT in LOVE with the durn things. You need to have a turbo on the exhaust of the 18 wheeler unloading the railcar. It can be done but bringing a railcar up to 12 PSI and moving product to the trailer takes time. Usually the cement went FROM the truck UP a pipe into the silo.
Then there is the matter of time to unload, viberators or hammers to get the stuff out. Cement hoppers are best unloaded by hard facitlties built to handle them. For a bad pun, one could say that these loads are kinda set in stone. Another reason that team track unloading of cement is difficult is because where I came from, you couldnt drive 20 miles without tripping over something that shipped cement from railcars or trucks.
I witnessed one day a centerbeam flat car unloaded by forklift onto a flatbed truck which took it right down to the lumberyard. I think it happened to be overflow because the lumberyard siding was too full to take any more cars that week.
A few days later the railroad retrieved the empty car and the others and went on thier way.
Down in Hope Arkansas there is a tiny cement place. I think they constantly unloaded a string of small cement hopper cars into a silo above the truck scale. You can probably see it on Google Earth near the large grain elevator in the same area.
Agriculture products get hauled in 3 bay hoppers, minerals, usually 4 bays, and cement, 2.
I need help in filling in the blanks, though.
About half a mile from my house is a team track that was used by a local cement company. The facility figured it was cheaper to haul cement from the team track to their facility than to lay new track into the facility.
Anyway, the cement truck (dry bulk, not wet) pulled up along side the covered hopper and hooked up the hoses, no permanent facilities of any kind.
Just to give some idea of the volume of cement moved from this team track, one semi truck drove from the team track one mile to their facility and unloaded, this operation was 8-10 hours a day 6 days a week.
Should take an hour or so to fill this bulk tanker.. probably either a Heil or a Butler and an hour to unload it. (I did mine in 40 minutes at 14 psi but had onsite electric motors to provide air)
That two bay hopper probably gave two to three truckloads. That sounds right about a day's work for one truck.
Interesting thread. I am also looking to add as much traffic to my pike as it evolves, but never thought about covered hoppers on a team track. Why not? Time period modeled is pretty key, I think, and has not been addressed so far in this thread.
When did PD cars come into practice? I'm modeling 1960 +/- 5 years, and assumed that covered hoppers (on a team or dedicated track - wherever) would be unloaded via dumping into a pit followed by mechanical lifting via a conveyor or auger. Is this correct thinking for my 1960 time period? Or would PD cars have been around then?
Maybe my pike should have a forward thinking plastic pellet consumer. It wasn't many years after 1960 when Dustin Hoffman was told "Plastics, my boy, Plastics".
Thanks,
Doesn't take much to make an industry does it?
Craig
DMW
Thank you for all of the replies. Now I know it won't look out of place. I was hoping it could be done. I model the Midwest with a couple of grain silos. I have a lot of covered hoppers. Since the team track will be at the "far" end of the branch, I think it will serve "the next town" just fine.
Thanks again!
bandit
onebiglizard wrote: When did PD cars come into practice? I'm modeling 1960 +/- 5 years, and assumed that covered hoppers (on a team or dedicated track - wherever) would be unloaded via dumping into a pit followed by mechanical lifting via a conveyor or auger. Is this correct thinking for my 1960 time period? Or would PD cars have been around then?
You could get away with Airslides and, pushing it a bit, Flexi-Flos (May 1964)
bandit0517 wrote: I have a "storage track" that I never really use for storage. I'm thinking of turning it into a team track. I know I can unload just about everytype of car there (boxcars, reefers, flats, gons, tank). Would there ever be any reason or even possible to unload a covered hopper on a team track? I'm thinking like a 3 bay covered hopper? How would you model it (some sort of pump and hose similiar to unloading a tank car?) I'd appreciate your thoughts. I'm just trying to generate some traffic.
I use a ACF hopper and a truck like a tanker but for more solid items with plastic pellets works great.
+ = :)
Tjsingle wrote:I use a ACF hopper and a truck like a tanker but for more solid items with plastic pellets works great. = = >$359.00 (OK, Price TBA, but this is from similar classic mint truck/trailer combo)=
=
= >$359.00 (OK, Price TBA, but this is from similar classic mint truck/trailer combo)=
That trailer is correct down to the last bolt that I can remember from my tanker days.
But 350 Dollars?
Falls Valley RR wrote: That trailer is correct down to the last bolt that I can remember from my tanker days.But 350 Dollars?
Well, to be fair the price remains TBA, but similar Classic Mint tractor/trailer combos are at or above that range - see Their website. Detailed brass collectibles, that's the reason for the price.
Anyway, I'd like to know what TJsingle is using - I checked the Walthers catalog and saw that only Herpa & Kibri had dry bulk trailers, very European looking and nothing like the Mint model...
chutton01 wrote: Falls Valley RR wrote: That trailer is correct down to the last bolt that I can remember from my tanker days.But 350 Dollars? Well, to be fair the price remains TBA, but similar Classic Mint tractor/trailer combos are at or above that range - see Their website. Detailed brass collectibles, that's the reason for the price.Anyway, I'd like to know what TJsingle is using - I checked the Walthers catalog and saw that only Herpa & Kibri had dry bulk trailers, very European looking and nothing like the Mint model...
Im not sure what it is, it may be stratch built bought it at show, but i cant find it